


All else equal

by galateaGalvanized



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Canon Compliant, M/M, Orion Pax called, he wants his conjunx endura back
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 12:31:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19887883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galateaGalvanized/pseuds/galateaGalvanized
Summary: Rodimus swivels his head back to stare at Orion, and Megatron can see his eyes catch on the differences: the lack of Autobot badge, the smaller chassis, all the little changes and details that Megatron had spent centuries cataloging.  With a visible jolt of understanding, Rodimus straightens and drops his weapon back down to his side, his characteristic grin stealing across his face. “No, that’s not Optimus,” he agrees. “But he didn’t steal anyone’s sparkprint.  You’re Orion Pax, aren’t you? From the Functionist Universe.”





	All else equal

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for everything in More Than Meets The Eye and Lost Light.

The cell walls seem even colder after Rodimus leaves for the last time, some intangible warmth draining out of the bluish steel as the exterior doors click shut with grim finality. Megatron feels the Rodimus Star’s absence like a hole in his spark chamber. His hand keeps starting to reach for it, too accustomed to centuries of using it as a guiding star across worlds and times and universes. He can’t regret giving it back to Rodimus, though. It wouldn’t have done Megatron much good for much longer.

Outside of his cell, scant miles to the east, construction is almost finished on the Mobius generator that will maintain a much colder and more permanent prison than this one. Despite the countless five-foot thick walls between him and that construction site, Megatron almost thinks he can hear the strike of hammers and the flash of a welding torch on steel beams, the stuttering whir of the generator spinning itself to life. Megatron has not often known fear, not in the mines of Messatine or the phaser fire of his infinite battlefields, but he thinks he can feel it now like a vice around his spark chamber. On the battlefield, he felt no fear because he was the Decepticon cause, without form or life beyond his mission. Now, the Decepticon cause is dead, and he might as well be.

His vision darkens, and the phantom sounds of construction equipment grow louder in his processor until he halves his sensory input. It had been easier to be brave for Rodimus, who had needed the reassurance, than to pretend bravery in front of Prowl, who was undoubtedly watching the video feeds like a Terran hawk.

Still, he has very little left to hold on to beyond his pride. His pride and his guilt and his life.

He is so focused on his internal diagnostics that he almost doesn’t notice the lights flicker. With a start, he restores his sensory input to maximum just in time for the noises he had thought were data artifacts to resolve themselves into footsteps and the sharp high wine of a plasma-welder. The lights snap off with finality, and the emergency lights, thin white strobes operating on self-contained power, are all that is left to light the long hallway that leads to his cell. The laser containment field closest to him is still on, beams seeming to crackle more angrily in the relative darkness, but the steel door beyond them looks ready to give. Whoever is coming must have already cleared two of the bulwarks, but Megatron can’t help but sigh fatalistically at the prospective of another failed, unwanted rescue. He gives himself a second to wonder who might be coming; there aren’t that many mechs left, Decepticon or otherwise, that would risk a rescue like this. As much as he might finally, here at the last hour, be allowing himself a thread of fear in the face of his infinite imprisonment, he still fully intends to walk into that imprisonment of his own volition.

At last, the doors give way. The emergency lights are almost all trained on his cell; if energy must be conserved, lighting the prisoner’s location is the priority. As a result, he can’t quite make out the mech on the far end of the hallway beyond blue optics and a strikingly familiar silhouette. It isn’t until the mech is standing under the scattered light of the lasers, one hand on his hip and the other twirling the arc-welder, that Megatron realizes his savior isn’t Optimus, it’s— “Orion?”

“Hey, stranger,” Orion says, and Megatron can hear the smile behind the faceplate. “You’d think I’d get tired of breaking you out of prison, but it just never gets old.”

Orion crouches next to the frame of the laser containment field with the arc welder and a small, black device, and, in just a few minutes, the field shuts down with one last puff of burning ozone. In the next second Orion is pulling Megatron to his feet, strong and sturdy and real.

“Come on,” Orion says. “We don’t have much time.”

Despite the warning, Megatron can’t stop himself from gripping Orion’s shoulders and drinking in the sight of him. The feel of Orion’s warm metal chassis is an impossible joy beneath his hands. “Orion,” he says, disbelief and unfettered happiness coloring his voice. “If I could’ve had one last wish, it would have been to see you. But, _how_?”

Orion lets him look for a solid minute, a rare gesture of patience and indulgence, before motioning towards the way he had come. “You can do a lot more than just see me once we’re out of here. Come on, I’ll explain on the way.”

At that, Megatron straightens, the top of his helm almost brushing against the ceiling of his cell. After months of what Prowl hesitated to term good behavior, they’d removed the handcuffs, but the room itself still limits most of his movement. Even Orion, with a smaller frame than Optimus’, looks cramped in its confines. Megatron cycles his air intakes, and he sees Orion’s face shift from satisfaction into stubborn refusal behind his faceplate, already knowing what is coming. “Orion,” he says, as gently as he can, “I have to do this. I have to pay for what I’ve done, and I can’t justify running, despite—or perhaps because of—how much I now want to.”

“This isn’t not a matter of ‘the selfish choice’,” Orion says, fire and steel in his voice as he grabs one of Megatron’s hands where it grips Orion’s shoulder. “This is a matter of doing what’s _right_. We need you, in the other universe. We’ve already lost so much to this one: our planet, our population. We can’t lose our leader, too.”

The words burn like unfiltered, raw energon plasma trickling down his chest. Megatron sighs. “No, you don’t need me. You’ve never really needed me, and you especially don’t need me now that the council is gone.”

Orion tightens his grip on Megatron’s hand and lifts it from Orion’s shoulder to his face, unshuttering his faceplate as he does so. Megatron, almost subconsciously, strokes his thumb against Orion’s bare cheek. “That’s not true,” Orion says, low and fierce. “I _do_ need you. Leave with me. Help me build the future we dreamed of together.”

“Orion, I,” Megatron says, as helpless as he’s ever been in the light of those steady blue eyes.

His indecision is interrupted by a clatter of footfalls echoing down the hallway, heavy and frantic and underscored by the shout of security codes and the hiss of hydraulic doors opening one after the other. Orion shutters his faceplate again in an instance and draws his gun, shifting in front of Megatron and staring down his sights as Prowl bursts through the destroyed door at the far end of Megatron’s cell. Prowl’s own gun is drawn, and he advances down the hallway with the predatory stride of someone aching for a fight.

“Megatron,” Prowl snarls, his shadow looming large behind him in the sickly white strobe of the emergency lights. “Don’t move a servo. I don’t care who—wait, _Optimus_?”

Orion doesn’t say anything as he keeps his gun leveled squarely at Prowl. The silence thickens around them like overheated oil, suffuse and suffocating.

Prowl edges forward warily, combat systems on high alert. “No. I don’t know who you really are, but--”

“Prowl, slow down! Is he there? Megs?” In a flash of orange and yellow, Rodimus rounds the corner as well. His helm is raised on his face, curious and cautious, and he skids to a halt once he sees the standoff. Hesitating, he shifts the focus of his gun back and forth between Orion and Prowl. In a choice that sends a familiar surge of fondness and exasperation through Megatron’s spark, Rodimus finally stops with his gun trained on Prowl.

“Optimus?” Rodimus says hesitantly, still staring down his sights. “What’s going on?”

“That’s not Optimus,” Prowl snarls, barely glancing at Rodimus and the gun aimed at his head. “Security, engage emergency protocol 113. Close the blast doors, re-engage the laser shielding, and alert the Galactic Council.”

“Security, belay that,” Orion interrupts as the blast doors start their descent. “Executive override for system shutdown. Authorization: Optimus Prime. Voice and sparkprint verification.”

They’re frozen in stalemate, manually stalling their exhaust cycles, until the security system pings in confirmation and the blast doors shudder back into their carriages.

Even above the noise of the blast doors, Megatron can hear the grind of Prowl’s teeth and the whine of his combat systems powering up and down as his processor tries to make sense of the situation. “You’re _not_ Optimus,” Prowl says at last, his single optic flaring bright in anger. “I spoke with him yesterday, and he’s still on his way here from Earth. Tell me how the fuck you stole his sparkprint.”

Rodimus swivels his head back around to Orion, and Megatron can see his eyes catch on the differences: the lack of Autobot badge, the smaller chassis, all the little changes and details that Megatron had spent centuries cataloging. With a visible jolt of understanding, Rodimus straightens and drops his weapon back down to his side, his characteristic grin stealing across his face. “No, that’s not Optimus,” he agrees. “But he didn’t steal anyone’s sparkprint. You’re Orion Pax, aren’t you? From the Functionist Universe.”

Orion Pax dips his head in a single gracious nod without letting his gun’s muzzle dip a micrometer. “Rodimus. Thank you for letting him stay, before. I’m here to take him back.”

Rodimus’ mouth pops into a perfect ‘o’ of surprise, then his whole face lights up. “Fantastic,” Rodimus says, rolling the syllables delightedly and bouncing on his heels, looking happier than Megatron had seen him since they’d last stood together on the bridge of the Lost Light.

“ _No_ ,” Prowl says, stopping Rodimus mid-bounce.

“What! Why not?” Rodimus holsters his gun and jabs a finger at Prowl, who rolls his single eye in irritation. “You wanted Megs wiped from existence, right? Here’s your chance. No more worrying about a prison break, or a Mobius generator malfunction, or the Galactic Council changing their mind when they need something done that only he can do. He won’t even exist! He’ll die in all the ways that matter.”

“Not all of them,” Prowl hisses, and Megatron feels the weight of his own guilt settle, cold and crushing and familiar, across on his shoulders. “He, of all of us, isn’t going to be the one that gets a happy ending.”

“Oh, go flip a table, Prowl,” Rodimus snaps, and at that moment the whole building rocks in the shockwave of a colossal explosion, fissures climbing the walls and arching through the bulwark-thick carbon steel of the ceiling. Megatron catches Orion’s arm as the smaller mech loses his footing, and he looks up to watch Rodimus stumble blindly into Prowl. The ceilings and walls bow inward as another concussive blast hits, and Megatron starts pushing Orion towards the entrance and Prowl.

“We need to leave, now,” Megatron says, his old authority coloring his voice in tones that brooked no argument. “We can have this discussion when we’re on stable footing and we know what’s going on.”

Prowl shoves Rodimus off of him, and he barely gets his gun up before a third explosion sends him staggering. “As if this wasn’t part of your plan, all along! What, who’s leading the attack? More of your functionist friends?”

At the question, Orion shakes his head. “I came alone,” he says, sounding worried beneath the faceplate. “We barely had enough energy reserves in my universe to send me over, let alone artillery of this capacity.”

The soft crackle of a short distance radio crackles at Prowls hip, and he presses his free hand to communicator interface. “Talk to me. Who’s attacking?”

“We don’t know, sir, but whoever it is knows what they’re knows what they’re doing. Some sort of heavy aerial laser fire is taking out the critical supports for the lower level. The reinforcement for the ceiling is so heavy, and we haven’t had time for any of the auxiliary supports since we’ve been focusing on the M.G.—look, we’re going to start evacuating the upper levels. Did you find him?”

“I found him. Arrange for a maximum security caravan by the western doors immediately. I’ll meet you there.”

“Already done, sir. Over and out.”

“Prowl, you heard the mech; we have to _go_ ,” Rodimus says when he sees Prowl about to launch into another series of threats. Prowl scowls and gestures with his gun for Orion and Megatron to walk out of the cell in front of him.

“Rodimus, get in front.” Prowl says, pushing Rodimus past the furthest exterior door, still unlocked from Orion’s order, and into the cell’s connecting hallway. “We’re heading to the ground floor prisoner transfer dock through the lighter security areas, so just follow my instructions. No sudden movements.”

Barely keeping his footing in the next concussive wave that rolls through the cell, Rodimus still manages to flip Prowl off over his shoulder. “Try telling the floor that. And damn it, shouldn’t we be heading up and out immediately? If the Megs’ super dungeon is about to cave in, why would the lighter security areas be doing any better?”

Prowl eyes Megatron, wary of saying anything that might aid an escape attempt, before answering. “The security areas on the upper floors aren’t made of solid durasteel like this one: they’re concrete and plaster. This ceiling caves in on us, even one percenters like these two would have difficulty getting out. A few floors of concrete and plaster, on the other hand—well. It won’t slow us down for long.”

Each hallway they turn down is looking the worse for wear. Even the emergency strobe lighting is becoming patchy, and the photo luminescent strips on the floor only show them where to place their feet. Their feet pound a steady rhythm on the shaking floor that is accented only by the dim sound of explosions above the facility and the creaking of the steel beams. They don’t see any signs of allies or enemies. This deep in the prison maze, there are few adjoining doors, and the doors they do pass are either open—revealing empty cells—or have frames crushed into such a jagged mess of metal that they will probably never open again. Rodimus stops by one such door, emergency strip LEDs flashing weakly around the frame, and brushes his hand over the detritus.

“Prowl,” he says, slow and horrified, “Where is everyone on this floor? Is there anyone trapped in here?”

“No. After the events of Garrus-9, we thought it prudent to stop imprisoning any incredibly dangerous Decepticon leaders alongside hundreds of Decepticon minions that they could marshal in the event of a jailbreak. Oh, quit looking at me like that—Primus, the facility is too new to keep many prisoners. We only brought Megatron here to New Cybertron for the theoretically short period of time between the end of his trial and the completion of the Mobius prison, so we built a temporary one. The Functionists didn’t have much use for prisons, apparently,” Prowl continues, shooting Orion a harsh look. “They mostly murdered people.”

Orion’s t-spine struts straighten, and Megatron recognizes it as one of the many body language signals that Orion and Optimus share. For Optimus, it had meant _grab whatever energon supplies are close at hand, trash the base, and run_. With Orion, it had mostly meant _put in an order of expensive engex and start drafting an apology poem_. Whatever verbal onslaught Orion is preparing to unleash, though, is cut short when a portion of the ceiling promptly buckles in front of them. The high-pitched screeching of the metal produces a physical pain response, and Megatron winces as Orion and Rodimus clap their hands over their auditory sensors. Megatron himself reaches up a hand to catch the ceiling above them as it, too, starts to collapse. He engages the hydraulics in his legs and shifts the load-bearing cores in his arms and spine to brace against the floor, each other, and the increasingly crushing weight of the metal. His strategy processors picks out two strained load-bearing pillars between the ceiling collapse that Megatron is holding and the collapse on this side of the doorway, and he calculates a forty-foot tent of space sheltering Prowl, Rodimus, and Orion. That processor also flashes red warnings in his vision: the space won’t last for long. He needs to get them all up and out before the pillars collapse and the whole hallway is buried.

“Megatron!” Orion shouts, hands up and hovering without touching, looking for some way to help support him.

“I’m fine,” he grits out, voice weak from the sudden power draw. “Draw your guns, all of you. Switch to the highest power setting and pump as many rounds as you can on the buckling between us and the far door. Make a whole big enough to crawl through, get to the second floor, and I’ll dive through myself when I let this fall. Our plan to start making our way upwards through the weaker floors is— _hnng_ —going to have to start ahead of schedule.”

“I’m not leaving you again,” Orion says, low and fierce, and Megatron sees Rodimus looking between the two of them with a tinge of curiosity in his concern.

“And I’m not leaving you,” Megatron says and shifts as much of his head as he can to look at Prowl. “I’ll follow you up or die trying; draw your weapons.”

Megatron sees Prowl hesitate, and, suddenly, he knows that Prowl would have left Megatron to be crushed by the ceiling in a sparkbeat were it not for Rodimus’ presence. Would’ve blamed it on _budget cuts_. Still, the three of them back up and fire point blank at the weakening, cracking sheet metal. The heat of their phaser fire concentrates in the thinnest, most stretched portion of the warped steel. Where it’s stretched and bent the most from the cave-in, the 5-foot-thick metal is less than half a foot. Their fire, at last, manages to punch a hole that melts and curls outward via thermal expansion, and, one by one, they dive through.

He hears Orion shout for him and writes a motor function routine for simultaneous servo movement. He pushes off from the floor and launches himself sideways at the exact moment that the hydraulics in his legs disengage and the struts in his arms shift out of perpendicular alignment with the ceiling. The portion of the ceiling he had held starts to collapse, and the load-bearing columns he had identified before buckle almost immediately from the impulse force. He runs, feet pounding the cracked floor, and he launches himself up through the blaster-fire induced hole and emerges into what looks like the shattered remains of an archive. There’s some crawl space between broken pieces of rebar-rife concrete that Prowl and Rodimus are just starting to move. The two of them have turned on their personal lights, shining warm rays of red and yellow respectively from their shoulders.

“You came,” Prowl says, and it sounds like an accusation.

“I found it slightly preferable to being crushed to death under thousands of tons of steel and concrete, yes.”

Prowl snorts, moving another block of concrete away from the upwards pathway he’s trying to dig. “I’ve personally witnessed Optimus drop a mountain on your bucketed head and still fail to kill you. I hope you’ll pardon my _doubt_.”

Another series of explosions rocks the facility, but they seem further off. Behind them, the remainder of the hallway finishes settling with a series of cracks that ring like gunshots in the dark. A few pieces of concrete and plaster hit Orion's shoulders, and he shrugs them off. Around them, their lights hit millions of specks of floating, shimmering debris.

"Now where?" Orion asks.

"Well, when you've hit rock bottom," Rodimus says, grinning as he points up. "Hey, Mr. Minutiae, how many floors do we have to dig through? I've only ever teleported in."

"We haven’t finished all of the planned upper floors, so, hm. If I believed this was coincidence, I'd call it luck: there are only five floors, all concrete and drywall," Prowl says, just as he’s interrupted by blaster fire tearing through five floors of concrete and drywall.

Megatron throws an arm over Orion and Rodimus each, pulling them in and arching his back to cover them from the rain of mixed fire and debris. When the dust clears, all of them--unfortunately including Prowl--are scraped and burned but still standing. As the dust clears and they recycle their air intakes, they look up through the new hole in what was once a series of ceilings. Above them, silhouetted perfectly against the starry night sky, is a sight familiar to all but one of them: hundreds of purple Decepticon worldsweepers, arrayed in the distinctive threat of Phase Five: Siege.

Even Orion turns to look incredulously at Megatron, who can only stare, shocked and aghast, at the wash of purple in the sky.

Prowl turns his gun on Megatron immediately, almost smug in light of this revelation. "Still going to insist our visitors aren't here for you?"

Orion steps in front of Megatron immediately, his own gun coming up, but before Prowl can shoot either--likely both--of them, Rodimus raises his hands in the universal sign for peace. "Hey, hey, let's talk this out. Megatron isn't going anywhere, right, Megs? Prowl, you can't kill him for something that was planned without his knowledge or consent. Come on, both of you put your weapons away. Our number one priority right now is to get somewhere safe and secure. Right? See if you can get Magnus on the line."

"Rodimus, that was almost reasonable," Megatron says, unable to help a smile.

His amusement is short-lived, though, as Prowl gets more aggressive instead of less. The flat planes of his body plating seem to bristle. "Oh, yes, of course it’s _reasonable_ to call the orator for the prisoner's defense to assist in restraining him, alongside the mech who worked at his right hand for years. The mech whose testimony single-handedly averted a death penalty sentence from the Council."

Rodimus slowly lowers his hands, reassuring smile slipping from his face by inches. "Prowl, what are you saying?"

"What I'm _saying_ , Rodimus, is that Phase 1 of the Decepticon battle plan has always been infiltration. You were the one who wanted him on New Cybertron, where we've been surrounded by slagging pro-Megatron graffiti and mechs who've only ever known him as the shining star of their freedom movement. Mechs who never saw their best friends murdered, their race destroyed, and their planet reduced to a smoking husk, alongside unending other war crimes—crimes I'm starting to think _you've_ forgotten."

"It wasn't Rodimus, Prowl," Megatron interjects. "I don't know who—"

"Who else? All the other Decepticon leaders are either dead or Starscream. Who else would want you free?"

Megatron stares up at the onslaught of worldsweepers, flayed by the sight that he once took such pride in. Orion's free hand slips back to wrap reassuringly around Megatron's arm as Megatron loses himself in the vision of how it must have felt to be an organic on a Decepticon-swept world, family and home crumbling down, some far-off nonsensical anger burning holes in everything he had built. He half expects to turn and see a phase sixer, all his sins coming up from the depths to exact their final revenge. The hopeless grief of it makes him, suddenly, remember.

"Rodimus," he says, slowly. "The worldsweepers. Who _could_ be behind this? There are too many up there to be from a rogue Decepticon faction. The only place to grab this many Decepticon ships would've been the Benzene cluster, after we fought the Functionist council."

"You think Adaptus is behind this somehow? You think it could be Pharma?"

"I think this pointless conjecture has gone on long enough," Prowl says at last. "I've been criticized throughout the war for not getting my own hands dirty, but honestly? I think your energon would help wipe them _clean_."

His first shot misses Megatron's head by half an inch, and it's only because Orion moves so fast. Orion pulls on the arm he'd grabbed earlier, slinging Megatron to the ground with a force that Megatron didn't even consider resisting. At first, Megatron thinks Orion's shots are going wide, but then he hears the tell-tale cracking of concrete from above. He and Rodimus can only watch in shock as the already-precariously supported beam above Prowl crashes down to bury Prowl in a spray of black and white and gray debris.

“That’s not going to hold him for long,” Orion says, clicking his gun into a hip pocket and reaching to pull Megatron back to his feet. “Come on, Megs, it’s time we made our exit.”

“Prowl!” Rodimus shouts, looking torn between Prowl, who is starting to shift the rubble of his temporary stone coffin, and Megatron, who is wrapping one arm around Orion’s shoulders. Orion has just partially transformed his arms, just enough to free his grappling cables, when the first glint of angry blue shines through the pile of rubble surrounding Prowl. Rodimus fidgets for a second and, at last, draws his weapon.

Orion sinks his grappling hooks into the roof of the downed facility, and he and Megatron start to rise through the air as Rodimus begins firing at them. His shots are scattered, missing wildly as their targets swing around the collapsed infrastructure. It’s only as Prowl’s face at last emerges, dozens of feet of below Megatron and still so visibly, viscerally angry, that one of Rodimus’ shots lands in a streak of gold. Megatron feels it slide narrowly between the metal plates of his chest and his shoulder and lodge painfully in his shoulder servo just before he and Orion emerge at last into the cool, clean air of the Cybertronian night.

They clamber up out of the hole and collapse, air intakes cycling rapidly, onto the scorched roof.

Orion rolls over and looks at Megatron, blue eyes sparkling with relief and that rush of joy he always got when one of his reckless improvisations somehow managed to work. “I thought you wouldn’t come. I thought I’d have to knock you out and tie you up in my cables to get us out.”

Megatron barks a dry, rough laugh. “No; dying to Prowl wouldn’t help anyone but him, and I’d hate to die just to help Prowl. Besides, these worldsweepers… Well, I don’t want yet more atrocities committed in my name. And honestly? I’d hoped you might help me save one more Cybertron.”

At Orion’s nod, Megatron sighs and reaches his hand to his pierced shoulder, sliding his fingers through the plates. He’d thought for a second that Rodimus was just firing blindly to give himself more credibility in Prowl’s eyes—well, eye—but this one had done some serious damage.

Orion notices his wince and opens a compartment in his thigh to reveal a few pieces of Megatron’s surgeon kit. “I thought wrong about Rodimus, too,” Orion says as he searches for extra pieces of flex steel. “From what you told me about him in the Function Universe, I didn’t think he’d turn on us, even after everything.”

He looks up to see a Megatron looking strangely pensive as Megatron pulls what he thinks must be a piece of shrapnel out of his shoulder joint to reveal a familiar, smiling gold face. Megatron flips over the Rodimus star to display a set of laser-engraved galactic coordinates still cooling in the hard metal.

“If that’s meant to reassure me, it’s actually more surprising that he’s apparently capable of both forgiveness _and_ subterfuge,” Orion remarks, voice as dry as the Manganese Desert, but Megatron can tell that he’s hiding a smile behind his faceplate. “Are those on Cybertron?”

“Yes, though I don’t know where.”

Orion stands and dusts himself off. The grappling hooks detach from the roof with a few loud _sniks_ , and he helps Megatron to his feet. “One way to find out. Let’s go.”

Megatron staggers to his feet, leaning heavily on the smaller mech as he finds his footing. His left arm hangs loosely from his injured shoulder, and he tries and fails to shrug when Orion looks at him questioningly. “They kept me on fairly low energon reserves, and I’m afraid they’ve locked my T-cog. You’ll have to continue masterminding our escape, I’m afraid.”

“Nothing I haven’t done before,” Orion says. “We need to keep you hidden, anyways, and you clearly need to get some rest. First, we need to get off this roof and away from the western dock where Prowl’s backup is waiting. Hold on to me, and hold on tight.”

It’s a miracle that they aren’t spotted by any high-flying Autobot patrols; they must be worried about suppressor fire from the worldsweepers. The twin circles of Luna 1 and Luna 2 light their way along the cracked and collapsed roof, and a quick grapple shot from Orion saves both of them from tipping back into the prison more than once. At last, Orion repels both of them down the northern side of the building, splitting the difference between the red flashing lights two sets of emergency rescue parties. Megatron lists to one side as they land on solid ground at last, and Orion looks up at him worriedly.

“I can’t tow you if you can’t transform,” he says.

Megatron can see Orion's brain ticking through plan after plan, and he gives a tired smile of reassurance. “I can’t change modes, true, but that doesn’t mean I can’t change at all.”

In the end, Orion drives smoothly past the search patrols and the stream of incoming guards, each of them waving or honking at the truck they think is Optimus Prime. Just below the sills of Orion’s tinted cab windows, Megatron lays as best he can on the reclined driver’s seat, and he falls asleep to the soothing, familiar rumble of Orion’s engines churning faithfully below.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the most self-indulgent thing I’ve ever written, so I thought I’d try to explain myself a bit.
> 
> Q. Wait, isn’t Orion Pax canonically dead in the functionist universe?  
> A.The functionist council thought they’d killed Pax, but come on, how many people have thought they’d killed OP across the millennia and universes? And how many were right? (They’d also thought they’d killed Megs and were clearly wrong.)
> 
> Q. Was there really pro-Megatron graffiti on New Cybertron?  
> A. Yes; it’s there in the background in the last few pages of the last issue of Lost Light, when everyone’s saying goodbye after their victory lap (“Megatron will save us”, to be precise. I thought it was a really nice touch from the art team).
> 
> Q. What’s the timing on this fic in relation to the end of Lost Light and the IDW continuum? Functionist Orion Pax might not be dead, but isn’t Optimus?  
> A. JRo gave us a lot of temporal wiggle room with his epilogue, and I’ll be honest: I didn’t read more than the tfwiki summary of what happens with Optimus after the events of LL. I’m tentatively proposing that the trial lasted ~4-5 years following Megs’ return, and Optimus came all the way back from Earth and the events in that storyline to both re-give his testimony and to say goodbye at the trial’s conclusion and Megs’ internment. (Prowl also probably wanted the only mech that’s ever been able to actually subdue Megs close at hand for that internment if Megs decided to unchange his mind.)
> 
> This story will be 4 chapters, approximately 20,000 words, and will be updated every few weeks. As always, all feedback loved!


End file.
